


You Can Change Right Next to Me

by sleeplessink



Series: I Built My Life Around You [1]
Category: Legacies (TV 2018), The Originals (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, but they're barely even mentioned here so i only put their friendship tag ay, this is the same universe as a handon childhood friends to lovers au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 10:08:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19765996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeplessink/pseuds/sleeplessink
Summary: In another world, she would whisper an apology, her eyes hard, and walk away empty-handed.In this universe, minutes passed by as she carefully weighed her thoughts and her impulses. Standing on a quiet street, she settled firmly into a conclusion:This child was hers.And that could be enough.ORThoughts & Headcanons in an AU where Landon’s mother decides to keep him and he meets Hope as a child.(Seylah POV-centered)





	You Can Change Right Next to Me

Seventeen years ago, a woman with the taste of oblivion on her tongue carried a newborn onto the doorsteps of a church. Under a dark sky, the boy’s wide eyes looked up at her and he smiled. The shade of grey identical to her own did not silence the uncertainties, nor the concerns about her inadequacy. But it shouted louder than her doubts.

In another world, she would whisper an apology, her eyes hard, and walk away empty-handed. 

In this universe, minutes passed by as she carefully weighed her thoughts and her impulses. Standing on a quiet street, she settled firmly into a conclusion: 

This child was hers. 

And that could be enough. 

Seventeen years ago, a woman with a newfound resolution in her gaze tucked a picture back in her pocket and walked away from a church with her son’s warmth pressed against her chest. 

Let's tell this story, shall we? 

Let's tell the story of a grey-eyed boy who grows up with a mother, with someone to teach him how to swim and to bake him pies when he’s feeling sad, someone to tuck him in and to kiss him good night.

.

She named him Landon because she had liked the name once, years ago. (When having children had felt like something she could want someday. Before going into war zones and seeing too many suffering people she could not save.)

They settled in a small town and took her real name, because the world did not remember Seylah Chelon. Years passed in the military had her in alert constantly, but a new routine seeped into her life. One with waiting tables, changing diapers and kissing a curly-haired baby good night. 

In this life, Landon found the first artifact far too early. 

He had freshly turned three when he found a liking to climbing everything in sight. All it took was a chair and a moment with his mom’s back turned for him to get his hands on an ancient Egyptian urn displayed on a shelf. 

It ended with a samuraï sword to the soft part between the dragon’s scales and a house on fire. It ended with Seylah grabbing bags she had already packed months ago in case of emergency and whispering soothing words to a crying Landon clinging to her chest. 

He had been too small to have taken the artifact with him without his mother noticing, so when they ran out, there were no monsters on their tail. But Seylah did not know that yet. (She would not learn about the three keys and their connection to Malivore until years later.) She only knew that there were monsters after her son, and that the last one had caused enough damage that Triad could be looking for them. And Seylah had never been a woman who left things to chance.

So they ran into the woods and did not look back. 

.

Every few months, they moved into a different cabin in the woods, in a different state. 

They went through as many houses as he would in another life, in another system. But here, he was always in the same set of warm arms, pressed against the rhythm of a heartbeat he learned to call home.

This was a different Landon, you see.

This was a Landon who spoke English, Hebrew and sign language before the age of four, who learned his numbers by counting the windows, doors and weapons in a room, who knew his nursery rhymes like he knew which gun his mother liked strapped on her belt and which she’d rather have by her bedside at night. 

This was a Landon who woke up to nightmares of a burning house, who blew out his candles on his fourth birthday surrounded by trees, who learned to hide when his mother gave him their designated signal.

But this was a Landon who had soothing words waiting for him when he woke up in tears, who didn't have a single birthday pass by without having his favourite cake baked for him, who didn't feel alone every time he got scared.

This isn't wishing him an easy life, no. But perhaps it's wishing him a better one.

.

It took two years for them to encounter the supernatural again.

When the woman saw Seylah’s hand inch towards her gun, her eyes glowed yellow. Seylah thought back to another set of glowing eyes, orange, and thought _monster_. Thought _not my son_. 

They fought, in the midst of trees and a grand miscommunication. Supernatural abilities against trained experience. Two mothers ready to give up their life for their child. (And both of them would, a few years down the line. But not now. Not yet.)

It took a squeal in the distance to make them freeze. They exchanged the shortest of glances, filled with wariness and barely concealed apprehension, and sped out towards the source of the sound. (“Speed” had a different definition for each of them, but Seylah was not too far behind when she arrived.)

“Landon!” her voice projected in spite of herself, right before she picked him up and held him tightly. His shirt was damp, but there were no traces of injuries on him. Relief washed over her features. When she looked around to assess the danger, she saw the woman from earlier crouched down next to a young, auburn-haired girl. She took a couple cautious steps back and turned to her son. 

“What did I tell you about wandering away?” 

“Sorry mommy.” His lower lip was out in a pout, his eyes streaked with guilt. “There was a splash and I thought it was an animal!”

She sighed. There was too much unquenched curiosity in him. 

"You always make sure I can see where you are, Landon. If you want to go somewhere, you tell mom, okay?" she told him, voice somber, as she let him back down on the ground. 

"Okay," he nodded, expression serious, before something flashed in his eyes and he pulled on his mother's sleeve. 

“Hope showed me magic tricks,” the words tumbled out of his mouth in excitement. “She made animal shapes with water!” 

At that, the woman from earlier turned to the girl — Hope, she assumed, who looked down in guilt. Seylah raised an eyebrow in curiosity. 

“I didn’t know he was there.” 

It was the woman’s turn to sigh. She ran a hand over Hope’s forehead, softly pulling her hair back in the process.

“We follow mommy’s rules even when there’s nobody around, okay?” 

“Okay. Sorry mommy.”

She kissed her daughter’s forehead, and a silence fell. The mothers exchanged an awkward look.

“Hope, how about you go and play with Landon? I’m going to talk with his mommy for a little bit, okay?”

“Okay. Landon, let’s find cool rocks!”

“Nice!”

.

Her name was Hayley, and she did not want to kill Landon or take him away. She was a mother who was looking out for her child, which was an experience Seylah knew all too well.

“You’re supernatural.”

“You don’t seem fazed.”

“I’ve seen a lot of things.” 

Trust was a long and hard-earned process, but it would be built block by block. There would be wary glances and defensive stances, tiptoed answers and white lies. But within an hour Hope and Landon were running and laughing like they had known each other their whole lives. These women would look at them and think: "My child deserves this, too." And painstakingly, ever slowly, they would let the other into their own lives.

They would become friends, these fierce mothers. The orphan turned werewolf queen and the soldier turned monster hunter. 

Over glasses of wines when their children were fast asleep, they would speak of things only the other could understand. About church doorsteps and wolfsbane tea. About blessings in disguise. About choices they would never take back.

.

Klaus would threaten her, once he'd come back two years later.

This man older than life would have spent years being tortured by one he had once called his son. His pain and isolation would eat him whole as he thought of his family in caskets, his daughter in a dangerous world he could not protect her from. 

He would come out drained and weak to find strangers shrouded with secrets who knew his daughter infinitely better than he did. His own flesh and blood and hope's world infiltrated by beings he did not trust. 

A hand to her throat, he asked Seylah who she was and what she wanted from them. Said that he would want nothing more than to snap both her and her boy's neck, but it seemed as his daughter had grown a liking for them. 

“Klaus!” Hayley’s voice boomed from behind them. “Let her go. They helped to _save_ you.” 

“And now they can go.” 

“ _Klaus_.”

“I will not let strangers come into my daughter’s life. I will not let her be in danger.” 

“And you think I would? Landon is Hope’s friend. Her _only_ friend. If anything he’s the only semblance of normalcy in her life.” 

Klaus opened his mouth to reply, but Seylah's voice made her presence heard.

“No, he’s right."

Both Hayley and Klaus snapped their head towards her. 

"We have stayed long enough. We will be going now.” Her face was impassive and certain, showing no sign that an original vampire had been strangling her a minute ago. “We tried to stay away from the supernatural for a long time, I think it’s time we go back to that.” 

“Seylah—“ 

“Hayley,” she cut her off. Her eyes were serious suddenly, oddly earnest. “I will not stay in a place where my son is in danger.” Silently, she added ‘ _you and I have talked about this_ ’. 

And they had, countless times. As they looked over their children playing together from the front porch, when Hayley left for a mission, during late night conversations over glasses of wine. And somehow, through a silent conversation between two mothers, Hayley understood.

.

Klaus compelled Seylah before she left, because he would do anything to keep his daughter safe. In a safe distance from the residence, he looked into her eyes and told her to forget about meeting any of them. Said her and Landon stayed in safe houses, but it was time for them to go to another far, far away.

He called Landon over and bent down to be at his eye level. The boy had his head tilted in curiosity, barely constraining his tongue from asking Mr. Mikaelson if he was here to let them come back. The children's goodbyes had been a fast-forwarded whirlwind of all five stages of grief topped with a copious amount of tears and arguments much too clever for their age, and Landon hoped so desperately that the grown-ups had made a mistake after all. 

But Klaus did not tell him he could come back. He was making sure he would never come back ever again. 

"You will forget about ever meeting Hope, Hayley, my family and I," Klaus spoke firmly, his eyes staring intently into his. “You will carry on and only remember having a good time with your mother."

Landon's grey eyes blinked back.

"Mr. Mikaelson, why would I forget Hope?" he frowned. "She's my friend. I would never forget her." 

The Original froze, and his thoughts shot back to the mysteries surrounding them which he was so wary of when he had come back. He compelled Seylah to stay there and not let her son go anywhere, and sped towards Hayley back at the house.

"Is the boy supernatural?" he barged into the room. 

Hayley sighed. She had just spent an hour comforting a heartbroken Hope, and she wasn't particularly in the mood for Klaus' antics at the moment. 

"Landon?" she asked, folding the last of Hope's dresses. "We don't know. We weren't certain." 

"And you couldn't have told me this before?" 

She frowned for a moment, as the words slowly sunk in.

"You _compelled_ them?"

.

After a heated discussion about respect and trust and what's truly best for their daughter, they brought Seylah and her son back to the house for a few hours.

Hayley sat her down with an apology and told her that Landon could not be compelled. Seylah looked over at this boy writing stories in crooked letters next to a girl painting them, and she felt fear fill her chest at having what she had suspected come true. Have Landon be different, and her unable to understand. 

But Landon, having felt a gaze on him, looked up to see his mother. The same set of grey eyes as hers stared back, and her heart settled firmly back on solid ground like it had seven years ago. 

He was _hers_. 

And that could be enough.

.

They left for good, in the end. Went to another house in the woods, in another state. Got used to being a family of two again.

Two years later, they would be approached by a man claiming to be friends with Hayley and Hope. It took solid proof and an actual call from Hayley herself for Seylah to let her gun down from his temple. With a cautious hand on the handle of her knife, she let him speak about the Salvatore school, about a place for kids not to fear their differences and to respect others who are different like them.

Seylah's face was stoic, but she struggled. Every cell of her body yelled at her to keep him safe, her very own son, this curly-haired boy who was hers.

“Can I please go?” Landon would ask, his eyes sparkling.

This was a boy who had seen children play in parks from afar and squabble in rows of a supermarket, and met none of them. He had made a friend once, and then lost her. 

“I’ll think about it,” Seylah answered, her lips pressed into a thin line. 

Years and years of training and survival warned her to protect his life. Her mother’s heart begged her to give him a life worth living. 

The supernatural had tried to take him away, you see. When he was three and playing with an urn. When he was seven and playing with his friend. 

But this was his world. This was his life. She wouldn't let her son be taken away from her, but she could not steal this away from him, either. 

So she let him go.

.

From the age of nine, Landon would go to a single school he'd eventually learn to call home. He would grow up around other children his own age, next to his first friend, a blue-eyed girl he would learn to know like the back of his hand.

He would call his mother every week, and she'd bring him home-baked pastries every time she came to visit. He would have someone to pick him up for break, a constant name that would sign permission slips for school trips. 

But there would be a knife that would find its way in a display at the school library in this world, too. It would have been found in the building's basement and brought up one summer. 

There would be monsters appearing on school grounds, glowing artifacts, questions surrounding Landon's identity. 

He would die in this universe, too. 

His mother had not jumped back into a pit of oblivion, not yet. She had a son who was her whole world and not a distant memory, whose existence she did not wonder about every year because she knew everything about already. She would not leave until there was no choice, until it meant saving his very life. 

So while an auburn-haired girl fell on her knees as she found her best friend's body, his mother broke innumerable traffic laws to make her way to him. Her heart racing but her hands steady. Her entire world shattering but her gaze focused. (This is what she had learned to do, in the midst of all her different worlds ending. To steady her hand, to focus her gaze, and to run forward.) 

He came back, of course. In the midst of ashes and roaring flames. 

Alaric called her back fumblingly, saying Landon was alive after all.

She would still be terribly furious. 

"You let him die," she would yell in the middle of his office. She never lost composure or control, not once, but she had lost her _son_. It would take everything in her not to pin him down and raise a knife to his throat. 

"I gave him into your hands to protect him, and you let him _die_.”

.

Seylah would tuck him in, that night after he died and rose back to life. Would look over him as his grey eyes fluttered shut, exhausted. She’d kiss his forehead good night, her boy, who was taller than her now but had once been smaller than her arm and clutched to her chest.

She thought about this world that kept trying to rip him away from her since that day she decided not to let him go, standing in the middle of a quiet cobbled street. Thought about this world that kept claiming him, through a burning house and a burning body, and the way she so stubbornly refused to stop letting him be hers. This world was his, but not her own. The only place she had made for herself in it was through weapons and gritted teeth; by hunting monsters, by fighting dragons and hybrids, by protecting her child. 

But as her calloused hands brushed his curly hair back, making his lips turn up slightly in his sleep, Seylah remembered. 

The way he held on to her hand during Hayley’s funeral, like he was seven again and trying to find courage on her skin. His calls every day during that first week at the Salvatore school, where he gave her a detailed report on all the different kinds of pies and why none of them were as good as hers. How he hugged her back after he came back to life, his curly hair smelling of smoke, whispering: “I’m okay, mom. I’m okay” again and again and again. 

Maybe her place in the supernatural was not just through violence. Maybe it was through him. Through the lullabies she would sing him to sleep, through the yearly birthday cakes that were not once forgotten, through the hugs she got every time she came to pick him up. Maybe her place in the supernatural was through fierce, motherly love.

And that could be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> So I had this idea for a Handon AU and kept coming back to Seylah's POV as I wrote bits and pieces of it; I decided to gather all the scenes together and just post it, sorry if this feels mismatched or empty in some parts !! (It's hard to make something feel complete when it was never meant to be a full story in the first place, ah)
> 
> also, this is me trying out a new format ??? it's not very fic-like, just a lot of headcanons being thrown around, but hey i thought i'd try something new, so here i am *finger guns* let me know what u think !!!!


End file.
